Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [53]
‘That’s enough, get on now.’
Eight bells were sounded shortly afterwards but before anyone could move to go below there came the boatswain’s whistle and his long-drawn cry summoning all hands on deck. The men of Barton’s watch came tumbling up. Barton himself took up a position on the quarterdeck a pace or two behind Thurso. Simmonds remained with the men on the deck below. Haines tilted his head to give his lungs free play. ‘All hands to witness punishment!’ he shouted at the top of his voice, as if to include the sky itself and whatever beings might be dwelling there. The crew lined up against the rails to starboard or port according to watch.
Thurso turned to Barton. ‘Everybody present?’
‘The doctor is not here yet, sir.’
The captain’s heavy jawbones become more prominent and he paused for a moment before speaking. ‘Haines, I want Mr Paris up here as soon as may be.’
In the interval no word was spoken; no sound came from those waiting in line at the rails or from the sullen man in his fetters seated between them, who kept his head down, looking at no one. The wind had dropped again to a faint breath from the west. There was not sea enough to slap the ship’s bows. She dallied there, sails set to the topgallants and scarce enough breeze to give her steerage way.
Paris emerged to this silence, climbed the companion ladder to the quarterdeck and took up a position alongside Barton. He knew what was going to happen without needing to be told, some blend of experience and instinctive knowledge informing him that this silent assembly was there to do or witness hurt to a fellow-being.
‘Glad you were able to get here, Mr Paris,’ Thurso said with malignant sarcasm. ‘Strike off the man’s irons and rig the grating,’ he said to Barton.
The fetters were taken off by Haines, with Libby assisting. Wilson got stiffly to his feet. Hughes and the cooper, a man named Davies, dragged aft one of the wooden gratings used to cover the hatches. This was laid upright and secured to the bulwarks by the lee gangway.
‘Grating rigged, sir,’ Davies said.
‘Mr Barton, ask the man if he has anything to say.’
But Wilson had heard this; before the mate was finished speaking to him he raised his head and looked up steadily at the figures on the quarterdeck. He was a big-boned, powerful man with a gaunt face and pale, washed-out eyes. ‘Nowt that can help,’ he said.
‘Aye,’ Thurso said grimly, ‘your help comes when I stay my hand. Seize him up.’
Haines and Libby were holding him still, but lightly. They would have stripped off his shirt but he drew back sharply, pulled it over his head and dropped it from him. Then he walked alone to the foot of the gangway and raised his arms so his wrists could be lashed to the grating. He was deeply tanned at the neck and arms but his back was pale and the scars of old floggings were visible on it.
‘Seized up, sir,’ Haines reported.
Deakin, standing to starboard with the others of his watch, witnessed these preliminaries with a familiar sickness, compounded of his own old fear and pain. He knew that pride of refusing to be manhandled to the grating – doomed pride, because the flogging always brought a man to his knees. Deakin had been beaten and seen men beaten for almost as long as he could remember and he knew that the Yorkshireman would be given extra for raising his head and looking steady – not for spite, but because flogging was meant to reduce a man. On a slaveship it would not be the boatswain that would deliver the lashes, or either of the mates – the grievance would be too strong for this looser discipline. Officers and men had often to work side by side with their hands dipping in the same grease-tub. Things could happen that looked like accidents. Or a knife between the ribs and over the side and nobody the wiser … No, it would be the skipper. He was talking now, in his hoarse, unchanging voice. Deakin took in the sense without paying much attention